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The Australian Freelance Writers Network

Category Archives: Networking

Please consider signing and sharing this Change petition set up by Ginger Gorman. Many freelance journalists have seen their work being ripped off by unscrupulous publishers and sadly by other journalists. Despite being a clear copyright breach in many instances, it’s up to the person whose work has been copied to prove the case. For large publishers, this means spending time, resources and money on prosecuting a case; for freelance journalists, it’s usually not financially feasible. Those who blatantly copy know they can get away with it – because they have for so long. It’s time to call them out on this unethical and unfair behaviour.https://www.change.org/p/stop-plagiarism-in-australian-journalism

Freelance journalists across Australia and abroad are warmly invited to join us from 8pm till 9pm, AEST on Tuesday May 27 2014 for the inaugural Australian Freelance Journalists Twitter Chat.

This week, we’ll be talking generally about freelance writing in Australia – challenges, opportunities and tips to make it work.

If you’ve got some relevant resources / links to share, we’d love to see them.

How to Join our twitter chat

If you haven’t done this before — welcome, have fun! The chat will be archived & posted here later.

We’ll use the Twitter Hashtag #ozfreelance and you can join us from your phone, tablet, laptop – anywhere.

From Twitter – type #ozfreelance in the search box to see what other participants are tweeting (or you can just click on the highlighted #ozfreelance hashtag in someone else’s tweet.)

At the top of your search – you’ll see “Results for #ozfreelance” – choose Save (option on the same line as ‘Results’ so that Twitter suggests this hashtag to you, saving you time as you tweet.

Just below the line ‘Results’ there’s two options – Top / All – select All to see everyone’s tweets.

Some Tweet Chat Conventions

* It’s ok (and at the beginning of a chat, very welcome) to introduce yourself – eg “Hi all, I’m Ralph, full time freelance journo for 3 years, ex-Treasurer, I write about super #ozfreelance” – always add the hashtag

* Feel free to pitch questions and comments directly to someone you see in the chat – if you are Q’ing or A’ing, just add the hashtag for each tweet eg “@ralphWillis Did you wear a disguise to get into this year’s Budget lockup? #ozfreeline”

* If you want to re-post a relevant tweet to the group and shorten it to include the hashtag – use MT at the beginning of the tweet (Modified Tweet)

* If you like someone else’s comment, ‘Favourite’ or ‘Retweet’ – retweeting will share that comment with your own Twitter followers (though retweeting an already hashtagged tweet in a busy Tweetchat might get annoying after a while)

* Warning: everyone will hate you if you use a tweet chat to promo your off-topic goods/services and they will hate your goods/services too. But if it’s actually relevant and might be useful, plug it once and move on.

Join the Discussion

Australian freelance journalists: Send us a request to join this group, include a short bio and your contact details and our volunteer group moderators will be in touch.
You need to have a Google account and be signed in, first. We'll then respond with your 'Google Groups' invitation. Check this page for information about how the group works.